Doctors and civilians tried to sound the alarm that something was going on, and were silenced until it was too late. To their credit, the CCP fired the Wuhan officials who presumably silenced those people, but it is still their responsibility for fostering a culture where towing the line and hiding problems until they cannot be hidden is acceptable for leadership positions.

There's nothing to credit. Everyone was in on the silencing, the CCP only used those officials as scapegoats. Everyone on all levels of politics was keeping this a secret and hoping it would go away.

You raise a high bar for China but if the virus appeared in many other countries the global outcome would have been much worse.

There are several articles about he CDC being silenced in various ways on early measures because they would hurt the economy.

you're missing that China initially suppressed info abt this virus, which caused it to spread. had they reacted immediately, we might be in a much better situation rn

That's a very important point if we're discussing the upsides and downsides of censorship, or whether China is a bad country and should feel bad about itself.

But if we're looking for an example of how to solve the pandemic, when people point to China as an example, they aren't saying "we should spend a few weeks pretending the virus doesn't exist, threaten doctors who talk about it, order our labs not to study it, and THEN take decisive action". They're saying we should do the stuff that China did, starting from the decisive action part.

Which is why I honestly don't understand why the mainstream media isn't saying "do what Korea/Japan did". Other countries have handled this admirably (e.g. Taiwan and Singapore), but Korea and Japan are larger and had very sudden upward trajectories in infection rates. Both countries acted decisively and they got this under control incredibly quick and with minimal loss of life, all without resorting to extreme authoritarian measures.

What China did is not something that other countries may want to replicate, but we should all be replicating the Korean and Japanese measures. Actually we should have been doing it weeks ago instead of pretending that if we didn't test then there would be no cases.

From what I learn, Japan is acting like UK. Nothing like China and Korea at all. They don't want to cancel 2020 Olympics after all...

I'm in Rome and I called my friend in Japan to enquire his whereabouts and he told me there they're not doing the same way Korea did it. Peoples continue to go to work. No mass screening. So cases aren't really reflecting the reality. It's like in USA. But one thing he conceide is Japanese are clean.

exactly. I don't understand why people are so eager to assign blame when in reality every one would be better of taking the good parts of what China did.

We should assign blame to a drunk driver who hits someone, no matter if he became sober after the accident enough to drive his/her victims to the hospital.

There's certainly lots of blame to assign to China and after all this comes back to a "normal" state again the international community should pressure China into eliminating the things that made all this possible: they should be draconic in not allowing things like the Wuhan wet-market be open ever again, all over China, for ever, they should be forthcoming in allowing international experts come and asses things as soon as a new disease manifests itself, they should allow their local medical experts have the upper hand over local Communist officials, at all times.

China was the first to have to handle the issue, so they had the difficult job of figuring out whether this virus was just like the flu (which some people are still claiming even today) or whether it was something to worry about much more than that. Imagine the cost to your credibility if you call it out for a huge danger, and it turns out it is just a new flu variant... The spread to other countries seems to only have started once the Chinese had conclusively shown this virus was very dangerous (and started the lock downs to prevent its spread). Hence, other countries had the benefit of this knowledge which China didn't, yet still failed to act. Some countries like the UK and Sweden even now pretending this is not a big deal and not taking anywhere enough measures to avoid widespread infection rates.

> They’re saying we should do the stuff that China did, starting from the decisive action part

You do realize that some of their “decisive actions” included enforcing quarantine via welded-shut doors, right?[0] I don’t think you’re ready to handle the kind of “decisive action” that China took.

0: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1703503427818

They only did that to people that refused to self quarantine.

Well, I guess that makes it alright then.

I don’t think you understand the significance of welding the doors shut... it means if they catch you outside you can’t claim you did it on accident. So, wink wink, they’ll cure you of the virus permanently after that.

Again, you’re not ready for Chinese-style “decisive actions.”

Don't worry about rights now, if you leave the door open and people walk about they will get even more decisive action from the virus, and gift the virus to others.

With the population it has, China could have been in a much much worse shape today were it not for the quarantine.

Yes, and so could many countries, including Italy. This is the deal we've been had, and need to look to the future.

>you're missing that China initially suppressed info abt this virus

Not only that, refuse to acknowledge, or share any information to international communities. The amount of things they do just to saves faces.

You mean like making the DNA public, posting statistics daily, sending doctors and resources to other countries to help train ...

That kind of not sharing information?

Like pretending it was an unknown disease that showed no sign of person-to-person spread when they'd already sequenced its entire RNA and found cases of it spreading within the community. Like having to be pressured into revealing what little details they did. Like, as I recall, only admitting that it was spreading person-to-person when another country spotted this. That kind of not sharing information.

It is a Novela virus. By definition you don't know anything about it until it is proven.

If you don't know the source (which is still unknown) then you cannot verify that it has spread human to human. (They should have assumed that it did)

Researches outside of China said there was no evidence of human to human transmission.

The first 2 weeks of January were handled rather poorly. But lack of information since then isn't really one of them.

What could China have done that would have made you personally happy?

People automatically distrust anything they say. What other information could they have provided?

When people dislike a certain government or person, they jump to the worst conclusions about them rather quickly. This is extremely dangerous. Imagine a sensitive situation develops where there's weak evidence the victim of your dislike did something that might endanger you or your country... if you immediately jump to conclusions, which you are very likely to do as this thread shows, then the situation would easily develop into a confrontation... this is not hypothetical. With Americans and Chinese (and Russians, Iranians) coming face-to-face in more and more sensitive situations around the world, it's only a matter of time until the mutual distrust will cause one side to pull the trigger under unreasonable circumstances.

so you mean what happened before JAN/20, now is MAR/14.

You mean like doing all that after they can no longer hide it from any one else and the world needs them before they started doing so.

I blame my own government for this, of course, the same that's getting all the praise and the "calls to responsiblity" from the press.

When we had the first cases its only concern was whether a minority party would leave the coalition or not.

It wasn't fit for the emergency, any emergency. Unfortunately, that's what we will be stuck with until it's over.

It's a completely different situation. If China contained the disease when they had only 10 cases, there would be no disease anymore. If Italy contained the disease when they had only 10 cases, new cases would arrive, again and again.

>Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc.

Just like the spread of fire, the window of opportunity to put it out is right at the beginning.

Yes, Italy could put it out when it first came to Italy but they would have to do it many many more times to successfully contain it. China just had to do it once and they failed.

If it did indeed come from live animals in a wet market, that seems like a potential valid reason for some criticism, although the they did a superb job adapting imho.

The difference is china could have contained it with minimal disruption. The only option italy had was to shut down all borders for the next 6 months.

A bat infecting a pig could easily happen in Italy. Or anywhere else for that matter.

No, not even close. Those wet markets are a fucking nightmare. There are truly optimized for pulling new diseases into the human population. Thousands of animals, hundreds of different species, many known to be reservoirs of potential human pathogens, crammed together in close proximity with each other and with humans who eat them.

In his interview with Joe Rogan, Michael Osterholm called it "the perfect experiment that no university would let you do":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw

Their discussion of wet markets starts at around 1:01:00.

You are missing the point of my comment. A bat infecting a pig or some other two step is a pre-cursor to many Zoonotic events. Those wet markets are indeed a huge accelerator. But the pre-conditions exist in many places and all it takes is one butcher that isn't paying attention and you've got the ball rolling.

Africa and Asia have a lot of this and so are a recurring theme in these very unfortunate stories. But it could happen here, and viruses really don't care about location.

Wet markets and bushmeat is how we got SARS and HIV. We're not sure if COVID-19 was really transferred that way, maybe we'll never know. The Swine flu also jumped species in a regular farm. So there are lots of opportunities all over the world, some more dangerous than others.

Bushmeat gave us Ebola as well. Deer hunting might give us CWD soon (we observed transmission to human-model mice already) and that one is basically disinfectable only by using high heat and pressure together.

Bushmeat gives Ebola over-and-over again. It has crossed the species barrier many times already.

And let's not forget about diseases like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

Even though they do not involve viruses they are still part of a similar kind of interplay between species.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. You said, "A bat infecting a pig could easily happen in Italy". How is a careless Italian butcher in any way comparable to a seething, filthy wet market where live pigs and bats are crammed into stacked cages? How much bat do you think they eat in Italy? Do Dutch butchers serve bat or pangolin or dog meat, or keep wild birds in cages on top of ferrets, which are good animal models for human influenza infections?

As a vegetarian, I'll happily acknowledge the barbarity and health hazards of factory meat production in the Western world. But this really is a tortured apples-to-oranges thing you're doing here. There is simply no valid comparison between a European meat grocer and a Chinese wet market, and I think you know it.

The world is a lot larger than Europe, and there are documented cases of Zoonosis from all over the planet (in fact, a good 2/3rds or so of our pathogens are of Zoonotic origin). Also, this particular virus likely did not cross over in a wet market, there is no evidence for that.

As for how much better the EU is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_Europe

Is a good example of what can happen here.

Again, you said "A bat infecting a pig could easily happen in Italy". I'm calling bullshit on that. I know it's just a silly example, but the risk of a virus hopping from a bat to a pig in Italy (again, how many bats do Italians eat?) is not comparable to a Chinese wet market, where beasts of all kinds, their waste, and products of butchery are intimately mixed every day.

> Also, this particular virus likely did not cross over in a wet market, there is no evidence for that.

If you're relying on a lack of absolute physical proof to support your argument, then I guess you win. Otherwise, there absolutely is evidence that this virus jumped from an animal reservoir local to Hubei, and that the wet markets are perfectly designed to facilitate that process. You're being a bit slippery on this point, but it really isn't the least bit controversial among virologists or epidemiologists.

American-style factory farming of cattle, swine, and poultry, where uncountable animals are crammed together and kept alive with antibiotics, is maybe a valid comparison. America is creating it's own epidemic of antibiotic resistance with the help of these farms (and so is China for that matter). But that does not -- or at least logically should not -- assuage anyone's discomfort with the health hazards of wet markets.

> one butcher that isn't paying attention

What are you suggesting exactly--that a slightly inattentive butcher wouldn't notice the difference between a leg of pork and a bat?

No, that there is a typical one-two step to a Zoonotic event where the jump from a reservoir animal to an animal that is regularly consumed is made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir

For plenty of these events we do not know the reservoir animal (yet). So that butcher will know they are butchering a pig, not a bat. But that pig may have become infected and if the butcher isn't very careful he may infect himself and if the meat isn't prepared carefully it may infect those that consume it. And by the time we realize it has happened these important bits of data may have already been lost.

There is a very good book on the theme called 'Spillover', highly recommended and so far it seems to have been exactly on the money with how this whole thing unfolds. Uncanny actually, it is like having the spoiler for a movie that wasn't made yet.

What we know so far is that it's likely to have started at a wet market in Wuhan where people lived with bats and other wild animals. Chances of cross-infection are much higher in that scenario.

The virus cannot have started back in November and started at the wet market at the same time.

Either one is true or the other is true.

People don't live with bats. The animals they farm live near bats.

What about smoked BBQ bat?

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/08/07/15822...